Prudential gets a piece of the sun

Prudential Financial, Inc., which has long focused on helping customers ‘Get a Piece of the (Financial) Rock’, is helping itself to a piece of the sun while also helping some of its Arizona-based employees plug into electric vehicles.

The global financial services company recently installed nearly 8,000 solar panels on Prudential office buildings in Arizona and New Jersey. The Arizona installation project also included construction of a covered employee parking facility and the addition of several car charging stations.

According to Prudential, the solar project in Scottsdale is the largest solar photovoltaic system on a commercial office building in Arizona. It involved installing 4,508 panels that generate approximately 30 percent of the building’s power use, with a peak output of 885 kilowatt hours. The 2,678 panels installed on the Roseland, New Jersey buildings will generate approximately 3 percent of the power use in that office campus, with a peak power output of 500 kilowatt hours.

The installations will provide 2.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually and reduce the company’s greenhouse gas emissions by 3.2 million pounds a year.

“Building these solar arrays underscores our commitment to investing in and leveraging alternative sources of energy to reduce our environmental footprint,” said Prudential Vice Chairman Mark Grier. “They will pay for themselves within a relatively short time frame, which means they make sense financially as well as environmentally.”

Prudential said it expects that the solar installations will save the company $3 million over 10 years.

In addition to a commitment to covering more of its energy use with renewable energy forms like solar, Prudential said it is also focused on promoting EV use among its employees, and more generally.

“We hope these charging stations encourage the use of electric cars,” said Michael Perrette, vice president and head of Corporate Facilities at Prudential. “In the coming years, we anticipate adding charging stations in other Prudential facilities as demand grows.”

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About The Author

Christof Demont-Heinrich is founder, creator and editor of SolarChargedDriving.Com, which he launched in September 2009. A journalism professor at the University of Denver (DU), Demont-Heinrich is a lifelong environmentalist who loves to bird, hike, camp, and bike. As passionate as he is about the environment -- and about promoting the synergy between solar power and electric cars, he is equally passionate about writing.